South Africa’s ambassador to the US is sent packing
This doesn’t sound like diplomat-speak:
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday that South Africa’s ambassador to the United States “is no longer welcome” in the country, in the latest Trump administration move targeting the African nation.
Rubio, in a post on X, accused Ebrahim Rasool of being a “race-baiting politician” who hates President Donald Trump and declared him “persona non grata.”
Rubio linked to a Breitbart story about a talk Rasool gave during a South African think tank’s webinar.
Rasool, speaking by videoconference, talked about Trump ally Elon Musk’s outreach to far-right figures in Europe as a “dog whistle” in a global movement trying to rally people who see themselves as part of an “embattled white community.” …
It is highly unusual for the U.S. to expel a foreign ambassador, although lower-ranking diplomats are more frequently targeted with persona non grata status.
You may have noticed – as I did – that “Ebrahim Rasool” sounds like a Muslim name. Here’s some of Rasool’s background:
Ebrahim Rasool was born 15 July 1962 in District Six, Cape Town to a Muslim family of mixed English-Javanese-Dutch-Indian heritage. Since he was classified as Coloured by the apartheid system, when he was nine years old, he and his family were forcefully evicted from the area due to the government declaring the area a “Whites – only” residential suburb.
Rasool has had a long career in politics in South Africa, starting during the apartheid era. Here’s more of his history:
On 14 July 2008, Rasool was recalled from the position of premier by the National Executive Committee of the ANC, as the ANC leadership had disapproved of him giving preference to the large Muslim and Cape Coloured populations in the Western Cape.
At one time, race determined just about everything in South Africa. To a large extent, I think it still does.
It should come as no surprise whatsoever that Rasool also is Hamas-friendly:
In a Semafor report earlier this week, a South African cited Rasool’s strident criticism of Israel — with the news site describing him as one of the South African government’s “most ardent pro-Palestine voices” — as the reason for his struggle to secure meetings with US officials.
He has also appeared to express support for Hamas, posting a photo to Facebook in September 2023 of a scarf that he said was signed by the terror group’s then leader Ismail Haniyeh and which he received during an “ITI programme with Hamas to share strategic wisdom in the face of Arab ‘normalisation,’ further Israeli occupation , & US approval.”
NOTE: South Africa has long had a fairly large population of ethnic Indians, and I recall that Gandhi spent many years there – 21, to be exact. It was where he developed many of his political beliefs, and where he experienced the most prejudice compared to other places he had lived, such as London.
I think he would be called ‘Cape Malay’. This population is antique, classified as ‘coloured’, and its home base is in Cape Town. The East Indian population came later and its home base is in Durban in Natal.
If you’re a Michener fan bump The Covenant up on your reading list. It’s good, and you’ll learn a lot about South Africa.
The Republic of South Africa was settled 400+ years ago, by the Dutch. The Afrikaans language is a result, until the Brits moved in upon the discovery of great subterranean values, diamonds and gold, which drew the Brits in. But with the integration actions of the last white president, F. W. De Klerk, who freed Mandela, SA entered a slow, inexorable decline, to the applause of the Western media. The Bantu tribes number 5, and 2 tribes cannot work the same mine together because they hate and kill each another. So tribes rotate monthly.
Cyril Ramaphosa, a Bantu former union organizer, is the current president. and has amassed great wealth via politics + corruption. He signed a Parliament-derived law a few years ago that made white farmers state-sponsored victims of land/property seizure without compensation, though they settled the Cape while the Bantu moved in from East Africa.
Today, SA unemployment is 20% or more, and SA is closed to being a failed state.
US Progressives aka Democrats have pushed SA in that direction over the past few decades. In fact, the Cape Dutch sought to prevent a Mau-Mau uprising, having seen the Kenya example of the 1950s.
The above is my comment, though this web asks me to post again!
I see that the NY Post article Neo linked is credited to the Associated Press, and obviously none of the Post’s editors read it before publication.
The typical leftist bias is evident in almost every line.
Cut-and-paste from the AP is a habit the Post really ought to break.
until the Brits moved in upon the discovery of great subterranean values, diamonds and gold, which drew the Brits in
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The British took control of the Cape Colony in 1795. Do not believe there was any gold being mined at that time. A section of the Afrikaner population trekked eastward during the 19th century into lands occupied by the Bantu, among others, and set up new colonies (eventually declaring themselves sovereign); as before, these colonies were agricultural at their foundation. IIRC, the gold discoveries which attracted British settlement were made during the latter part of the 19th century.
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South Africa has been largely stagnant economically for thirty years – slow growth in per capita product if any at all. Its homicide rate, while high, is lower than it was in 1990. Aside from street crime, the salient issue right now is the decay in its water and power infrastructure. The country’s black pols own that situation.
Interesting comment about the large Indian population.
My buddy and I found ourselves in a bar in Mombasa, Kenya in 1987. We were the only 2 white guys in the bar. You would think that the rest of the bar would have been black Africans. Alas, no. It was all Indians (lots of Sikhs if I remember correctly but I base this on the number of turbans). They had a pretty good entertainment as Indian Elvis Presley (the fat Elvis) came out and did a few numbers. I thought we might be killed as my buddy started making stupid comments on Elvis. Like dude, we are the outsiders, please show some decorum.
Well cecil rhodes funded the transvaal expedition if memory served the boer war was one of the relatively brief incursions that made churchills career that was gandhis intro into public life and gave us the re concentration camp that eerie kipling rhyme ‘boot boot’ also came of it
The boer war drove the afrikaners into the arms of the germans including nazi germany with their peculiar recipe called apartheid that triumphed in 48 race relations were complex in the continent as ghandi discovered the rise of the national party drove the native xhosa into the arms of the soviets in time nkomo du siswe the militia trained by them of course sharpesville was an atrocity but was the armed insurgency the right answer
(I derived some of this from michener and some from wilbur smith the rivonia trial that mandela was involved with are fictionalized with another character) which was about an armed assault on the Capitol city, of course when i first heard about mandela in the 80s one of those concerts that yielded little they left much of this out. Now was he in the right considering the circumstances of his people i am less confident of that
All things considered the actions of the colonial power and its associate are disputed
Has thirty years of the ANC monopoly yielded good fruit i am even less confident of that
Michener being an American liberal was more optimistic Smith less so he did revisit rhodesia in the 80s but not south africa directly